“Prayer is appointed to convey
The blessings God designs to give:
Long as they live should Christians pray;
They learn to pray when first they live.

“If pain afflict, or wrongs oppress;
If cares distract, or fears dismay;
If guilt deject, if sin distress;
In every case, still watch and pray.

“’Tis prayer supports the soul that’s weak;
Though thought be broken, language lame,
Pray, if thou canst or canst not speak;
But pray with faith in Jesus’ name.

“Depend on Him; thou canst not fail;
Make all thy wants and wishes known;
Fear not; His merits must prevail:
Ask but in faith, it shall be done.”

Joseph Hart

This is something that Andrew Peterson posted in a recent blog post over at The Rabbit Room, and I thought it was so brilliant that I had to share it:

“I am convinced that poets are toddlers in a cathedral, slobbering on wooden blocks and piling them up in the light of the stained glass. We can hardly make anything beautiful that wasn’t beautiful in the first place. We aren’t writers, but gleeful rearrangers of words whose meanings we can’t begin to know. When we manage to make something pretty, it’s only so because we are ourselves a flourish on a greater canvas. That means there’s no end to the discovery. We may crawl around the cathedral floor for ages before we grow up enough to reach the doorknob and walk outside into a garden of delights. Beyond that, the city, then the rolling hills, then the sea. And when the world of every cell has been limned and painted and sung, we lie back on the grass, satisfied that our work is done. Then, of course, the sun sets and we see above us the dark dome of glittering stars.

On and on it goes, all the way to the lightless borderlands of time and space, which we come to discover in some future age are but the beginnings or endings of a single word spoken from the mouth of God. Some nights, while I traipse down the hill, I imagine that word isn’t a word at all, but a burst of laughter.”

If you don’t know who Andrew Peterson is, then open iTunes right now (or whatever you use to get music) and buy his album, The Far Country.

It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is a profound laziness and fatigue; and the fact is that the real laziness is the cause of the apparent bustle. Take on quite external case; the streets are noisy with taxicabs and motor-cars; but this is not due to human activity but to human repose. There would be less bustle if there were more activity, if people were simply walking about. Our world would be more silent if it were more strenuous. And this which is true of the apparent physical bustle is true also of the apparent bustle of the intellect. Most of the machinery of modern language is labour-saving machinery; and it saves mental labour very much more than it ought. Scientific phrases are used like scientific wheels and piston-rods to make swifter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable. Long words go rattling by us like long railway trains. We know thy are carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk and think for themselves. It is a good exercise to try for once in a way to express any opinion one holds in words of one syllable. If you say “The social utility of the indeterminate sentences is recognised by all criminologists as part of our sociological evolution towards a more humane and scientific view of punishment,” you can go on talking like that for hours with hardly a movement of grey matter inside your skull. But if you being “I wish Jones to go to gaol and Brown to say when Jones shall come out,” you will discover, with a thrill of horror,that you are obliged to think. The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word “damn” than in the word “degeneration.”

from G.K. Chesterton’s masterpiece Orthodoxy

Hey guys, today is Epiphany! It’s a feast day that celebrates the incarnation.

“Epiphany means ‘to make manifest.’ By the fourth century, Epiphany was a major annual celebration for the church. It is a season when we see Jesus’ divine mission revealed when the magi visit him, and then we remember his baptism, miracles, ministry, and his call for us to follow.”

Just something to think about. And maybe pray about?

Have a great day, friends!

One of my favorite hymns–originally from the Liturgy of St. James. Watch & listen to it here.

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
Our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth He stood,
Lord of lords, in human vesture,
In the body and the blood;
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven
Spreads its vanguard on the way,
As the Light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day,
That the powers of hell may vanish
As the darkness clears away.

At His feet the six winged seraph,
Cherubim with sleepless eye,
Veil their faces to the presence,
As with ceaseless voice they cry:
Alleluia, Alleluia
Alleluia, Lord Most High!

That is the title of a great post by the late “iMonk” (Michael Spencer) who recently lost his battle with cancer. Or perhaps to say it another way, finally has total victory over sin, as he stands in the presence of God.

At any rate, I think this is an excellent article, and one that people like me need to read, and live by. Not to say that we shouldn’t be bold, and preach the hard truths of the Gospel unashamedly, but that we should be careful about what hills we are willing to die on. And also, we need to be constantly checking our motives to make sure that the reasons we are fighting are pure–that our heart is something other than just wanting intellectual or spiritual dominance.

I don’t know a whole lot about Spencer, and I haven’t really ever read much of his blog before, but I think after reading this article I’m going to have to go back and peruse his archives. He speaks with both wisdom and clarity, and seems to have a clear understanding of what is important (and what is not).

Let me say first of all that this is a topic that has been floating around in the back of my mind lately. It surfaces when I’m not doing much or when I’m working on a graphic design project that doesn’t take much thought. Some of my best thinking comes that way…ha. But anyway, here’s the question: What do I think about the doctrine of election? I mean, (as Trey so eloquently said of me) I’m a universalist in that I want everybody to go to heaven, but not in that I believe everybody will go to heaven. More recently I’ve been of the thinking along the lines of this quote from the end of an article written by Shane Claiborne to non-Christians:

In closing, to those who have closed the door on religion — I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend if I thought he was going to hell. I said, “I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you.” If those of us who believe in God do not believe God’s grace is big enough to save the whole world… well, we should at least pray that it is.

(Read the rest of this article here for an interesting point of view to consider from a very legit, if a little extreme, Christian.*) Not so much of the “It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you,” part, though it definitely pains me thinking about friends I have and other people who won’t be in heaven (all the better reason to live out Christ’s love and forgiveness), I’m guessing I won’t be concerned with much else than God. I’m more talking about the last sentence. I’m of the mindset that I should believe that God’s grace is big enough to save the whole world and pray that God will use me and every other Christian to help that be accomplished.

I was fairly conflicted with my line of thinking I’d been following in my mind and the doctrine of election that is so prevalent in the Christians that I know personally until I read a post the other day that made perfect sense to me. This is what John Piper posted about election, and it’s the best way I’ve heard it explained so far:

Is it a sin to dislike the doctrine of election?

It’s sin not to like the true doctrine of election. It’s sin not to like what God likes.

I want to say it like that because many people have conceptions of doctrines—all kinds of doctrines—that are inaccurate. And therefore their good hearts dislike them.

So you could say, “I dislike election,” and be a good person, because you don’t see election clearly. And what you’re disliking should be disliked. Or you may be a person who is starting to see it clearly and your old self, which is bad, is rising up and not liking what ought to be liked.

So I don’t know whether this person should be chastised or not. The principle would be, “To the degree that you see biblical truth clearly, you should like it.”

Hell is a biblical truth. So when I say, “You should like hell,” what I mean is that you should like it the way God does.

God, it says, “is not willing that any should perish.” God “does not delight in the death of the wicked.” God “afflicts us, but not from his heart” (Lamentations 3). So there is in God himself a willing that hell be and a liking that it exists in that big picture. And yet he grieves over sending anybody there.

So the word “like” is just a little bit difficult here, because you’re going to have to do double perspectives again.

If God ordains that Jerusalem be destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, should we like that? My answer is both yes and no. We should not like women boiling their children, but we should approve of God’s decision that it happen.

And so there’s a double perspective in which the things that you see in the small lens should be disliked, whereas what you see in the bigger lens of how God runs the world should be liked.

So there you have it! While I may not appreciate that people go to hell, I should appreciate the place hell has in God’s plan. Though I’m definitely still not saying I’m a Calvinist in regards to this debate as a whole. I feel like that’s too simple of putting it. I believe there is a tension between the two sides and I believe that John Piper pegged that tension very well in that post.

(I feel like I didn’t write this post as well as I could have, so please feel free to call me out on anything that is unclear.)

__________________________________________

*Though from what I’ve read of his work, he would greatly appreciate me saying I thought he is a little extreme, because he believes that if everyone agrees with him he’s doing something wrong, but that’s another subject I can post later. If you are looking for a book that is challenging/a different perspective, try Claiborne’s book The Irresistible Revolution. Though I don’t agree with everything he says, he poses very interesting points.

C.S. Lewis’s Weight of Glory sermon/speech/essay continues to be in my estimation the best work he ever produced. At least half, if not more, of the things I quote/reference from Lewis are contained in this very short piece. If you haven’t read it, you need to. Here is a taste, perhaps the most quoted paragraph of anything he ever said or wrote:

Indeed, if we consider the
unblushing promises of reward and the
staggering nature of the rewards promised
in the Gospels, it would seem that Our
Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but
too weak. We are half-hearted creatures,
fooling about with drink and sex and
ambition when infinite joy is offered us,
like an ignorant child who wants to go on
making mud pies in a slum because he
cannot imagine what is meant by the offer
of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily
pleased.

Reposted from mah blog

It’s so simple! It’s so beautiful! It’s so unfathomably gracious!

So loving, undeserved, and the largest, most Amazing process we can/will ever be blessed to be a part of!

It makes perfect sense!

God provided for us a way that we can escape from the dismal failures that our lives are without Him!

We, though our fleshly selves are broken, messed up failures, have been given the opportunity to become perfect saints of God who are no longer slaves to our terrible intrinsic nature!

We can be made new people, NEW PEOPLE!

We still mess up, we still make mistakes, but the mistakes aren’t our own mistakes, but the mistakes of our old natures that we will one day be purged of completely!

Yes, you read that correctly! We aren’t judged based on our old natures, but on the NEW natures that God has created us by. Natures that know no sin!

Not only did you do this when nothing was making you, Lord, you laid your own life down to complete the process! Your love is Strong! Stronger than the anything else the universe will even know.

So.

Yes, so.

So then I should be SO THANKFUL for this completely undeserved grace God has given that I should love nothing less than to, and be completely unsatisfied unless I use ALL of my resources, time, money, love, life, opportunities, and everything else that I have been given (that pales in comparison to this awe-inspiring amount of grace that I have been granted), for the continual worship and adoration and thanksgiving to the One who allowed me to be part of such a beautiful process!

Because how could I not be THAT thankful for such an undeserved, unearned gift?

It is all so perfect.

It all makes so much sense.

May I never lose the wonder, the wonder of the Cross!

May I see it like the first time, standing as a sinner lost!

Undone by mercy and left speechless, Watching wide-eyed at the cost.

May I never lose the wonder, the wonder of the cross!

May I always be in wonder at the amazing, awesome things you done for Your undeserving Church, Lord.

Amen.